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> If you present data by algorithm, you are no longer an impartial common carrier and are liable for the content you present Hacker News is a site that present

> If you present data by algorithm, you are no longer an impartial common carrier and are liable for the content you present Hacker News is a site that presents data by algorithm. Under your definition, Hacker News goes away, too. A more accurate framing would be that they’re going after personalized recommendation algorithms. It’s not obvious that offering a recommendation algorithm would mean that the site is no longer an impartial common carrier.

jackdoe 6mo ago
> Hacker News goes away, too. so be it.
- vasco 6mo ago
  This is a strange thing to comment on HN. If you truly believed it why would you be here?
  - buellerbueller 6mo ago
    The majority of terminally addicted people I have interacted with at length have both recognized the terminal nature of their addiction and been unable to do anything about it. That's the nature of addiction.
  - coffeefirst 6mo ago
    Honestly the damage done by TikTok et al is so severe that I’m okay with a little collateral damage. We will build new things. But I also see no reason you can’t separate out forums with upvoting from the personalized engagement optimized feed. They are fundamentally different designs. (In other words, Subreddits are safe, the Reddit homepage is regulated unless it changes.)
another-dave 6mo ago
Goes away, or is liable for the content promoted to the frontpage under the OP's take? But I'd agree, that it's personalisation rather than just curation that's the issue. I think even requiring sites to have a "bring your own algo" version (and where ads are targetted to the algorithm, rather than the person) would cure a lot of ills. As is, even with something like Spotify where you _are_ paying there's no easy way to "reset" your profile to neutral recommendations
- Aurornis 6mo ago
  > Goes away, or is liable for the content promoted to the frontpage under the OP's take? Same thing. There is no Hacker News if Y Combinator becomes liable for user submitted content. It’s an obvious backdoor play to make sites go away. If a site becomes liable for content posted, you cannot allow users to post content without having the site review and take responsibility for every comment and every post. The people proposing it haven’t considered how damaging that would be for the ability of individuals to share ideas and their content. When every site with “an algorithm” is liable for content posted, nobody is going to allow you to post something. It’s back to only reading content produced and curated by companies for us. Total own-goal for the individual internet user.
  - buellerbueller 6mo ago
    >It’s an obvious backdoor play to make sites go away. Oh no.
  - andrewjf 6mo ago
    I agree with what OOP said. But it’s not my intent to “shut sites down.” I have this view to try to increase diversity of media consumption and break people out of echo chambers. If your business model is so shit you have to exploit weaknesses in human brains to keep people viewing ads and can’t adapt, then that’s your problem. If you have an algorithm whose sole purpose is to “engagement” with your own platform (by intentionally and purposely pushing clickbait, ragebait, and media that keeps reinforcing your clicks) you should no longer get section 230 protections - you are no longer a neutral party. These algorithms exist to create echo chambers and keep you clicking so you can consume more ads. I would love to hear other ways of solving the problems of social media.
    - Aurornis 6mo ago
      > I have this view to try to increase diversity of media consumption and break people out of echo chambers. Making sites liable for all user-posted content would do the reverse of this. Every platform that lets people submit content would have to stop doing that, because it’s an impossible liability to manage. You’d have to host your own site. You wouldn’t be able to share anything about it on a social media site because its user-generated content. No visitors unless you advertise it through paid contracts with companies that can review it and decide to accept the liability.
deleted 6mo ago
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tencentshill 6mo ago
The algorithm is not personalized. It's the same for every user. No issue there.
- tolerance 6mo ago
  But still an algorithm. The difference is that we (at least some of us) place a greater trust in the integrity behind how information surfaces on HN. I think that some parts of it are open source, and the moderators are transparent enough about what isn't public + there is a mix of folk knowledge that explains how HN works under the hood. Depersonalized algorithms or recommender systems aren't inherently better than personalized ones. HN is an exceptional example of the former but I think at scale people would come up with a different crop of complaints for them.
  - tencentshill 6mo ago
    Yes it's still an algorithm. Cable TV programming is another example. Everyone sees the same content. The ads are changed at the local broadcaster level but are not tailored to the individual, and are not harmful in the ways the EU is regulating. If anything, everyone watching the same thing is good for social cohesion. Everyone discusses the latest TV episode the next day at the office.
    - tolerance 6mo ago
      Right. Withholding the fact that cable television doesn't appear to be the typical distribution method anymore, how do broadcasters select/schedule their programming?
      - fc417fc802 6mo ago
        What's your point? It seems like you're pedantically focusing on a single word without regard for the actual meaning of the broader statement. No one is proposing to regulate things done in the traditional manner of cable tv, nor other uniform and impartial approaches.
xigoi 6mo ago
> Under your definition, Hacker News goes away, too. It doesn’t have to go away, just switch to chronological sorting.
- Analemma_ 6mo ago
  Have you ever browsed by New and seen the firehose of shit which doesn’t make it to the front page? HN sorted by new is effectively useless and you might as well shut the site down at that point. “Chronological only” might work for something like Twitter where you’re choosing to follow specific individuals to see their posts, it can’t work for curation sites like HN/Reddit.
  - xigoi 6mo ago
    That could be solved by allowing users to filter by score or number of comments.
    - throwaway902984 6mo ago
      Which would lead to everyone having their own personalized front page? Not controlled by dang so much but still.
      - xigoi 6mo ago
        Not being controlled by the website owner is the point.
        throwaway902984 6mo ago
        Yeah for sure, I see what you were saying. Changing that part might not achieve the desired effect though is what I was saying. Context dependent on the site here of course, but in a general sense I could see meta et al. being nonplussed by this to a significant extent.
    - nemothekid 6mo ago
alkonaut 6mo ago
> Hacker News is a site that presents data by algorithm Does it though? I mean by "algorithm" in this context we mean "personalized algorithm meant to maximize engagement and retention". Not e.g. "sort by upvotes and decay by time" or even "filter content based on coarse user location". Does HN show me a different front page than everyone else based on which articles I have read or upvoted? That would make me feel worse about the site because I don't want a personalized HN feed I want to read what everyone else is reading (which is incidentally why I refuse to give up linear TV).
- Aurornis 6mo ago
  > Does it though? I mean by "algorithm" in this context we mean "personalized algorithm meant to maximize engagement and retention". I addressed that in the second half of my comment already. But yes, HN qualifies as a site that displays by algorithm. If you mean personalized recommendation algorithm then it’s important to call that out. The last thing we want is regulation so broad that it catches every site that ranks things.
  - alkonaut 6mo ago
    No one _ever_ even considers "algorithms" in the CS sense here (such as "sorting"), and even bringing that notion up would be deliberately dumbing down the discussion (yet it keeps happening in this thread over-and-over-again because people are for some reason very "well ackshually sorting is an algorithm"). "Algorithm" in this context is very clear what it is. It is not what the word means in Computer Science or in general. Just from the context and without any clarification needed "algorithms" in social media means "addictive personalized feeds".
    - ryandrake 6mo ago
      I think we need a different word, so that Computer Science grads stop getting wrapped around this axle. We're obviously not talking about Quicksort when we're talking about social media algorithms and other recommendation/discovery algorithms. Heck if I know what that word would be.
dangus 6mo ago
The difference is you can’t prove that hacker news has a bunch of psychologists on staff who are dreaming up ways to make the website addictive. If you take TikTok to court and go through discovery you’re going to find internal communications of people talking about ways to get people to stay on the app longer, ways to make the content more addictive, ways to maximize ad reach, etc. Hacker news just tossed a simple upvote downvote system and called it a day. Plus it has no endless scroll, no graphics at all, limits your comment frequency, has no push notifications, etc.
deleted 6mo ago
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deleted 6mo ago
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kjkjadksj 6mo ago
Hacker news front page would go away but not new or any top ranking. It would be nice to have a hn without the second chance queue imo.
cameldrv 6mo ago
It would be a lot better if the user just had more control over the recommendation algorithm, either to replace it with an alternative or tune it. For example, I never want to watch YouTube shorts. Every time I see them, I click "show less often" since it is the only way I can express this preference, and still YouTube shows me them. Obviously YouTube knows that even among people who do this, they still get good engagement out of YouTube shorts, so they keep showing them, but these users have explicitly asked YouTube to not show them. It would be like a recovering alcoholic whose landlord comes by every week and leaves free samples of booze, because they get paid by the booze company, even though the alcoholic has asked them to stop.
SideburnsOfDoom 6mo ago
When we talk about "The Algorithm" in terms of social media, the term has just about taken on a meaning opposite to the original one. My coder's view of the simplest possible algorithm: "People that I follow, their posts, ordered by most recent first." it's transparent, easy to understand, consistent, and a few lines of code. Big Social media's "The Algorithm" : a complex, utterly opaque, personally targeted, frequently shifting internal set of rules that they manipulate to maximise engagement and revenue, while hiding this from the users whole attention is being monetised, designed according to business priorities. Clearly, if you use the second kind of Algorithm then you are no longer an impartial common carrier.

jackdoe 6mo ago

> Hacker News goes away, too. so be it.

vasco 6mo ago
This is a strange thing to comment on HN. If you truly believed it why would you be here?
- buellerbueller 6mo ago
  The majority of terminally addicted people I have interacted with at length have both recognized the terminal nature of their addiction and been unable to do anything about it. That's the nature of addiction.
- coffeefirst 6mo ago
  Honestly the damage done by TikTok et al is so severe that I’m okay with a little collateral damage. We will build new things. But I also see no reason you can’t separate out forums with upvoting from the personalized engagement optimized feed. They are fundamentally different designs. (In other words, Subreddits are safe, the Reddit homepage is regulated unless it changes.)

another-dave 6mo ago

Goes away, or is liable for the content promoted to the frontpage under the OP's take? But I'd agree, that it's personalisation rather than just curation that's the issue. I think even requiring sites to have a "bring your own algo" version (and where ads are targetted to the algorithm, rather than the person) would cure a lot of ills. As is, even with something like Spotify where you _are_ paying there's no easy way to "reset" your profile to neutral recommendations

Aurornis 6mo ago
> Goes away, or is liable for the content promoted to the frontpage under the OP's take? Same thing. There is no Hacker News if Y Combinator becomes liable for user submitted content. It’s an obvious backdoor play to make sites go away. If a site becomes liable for content posted, you cannot allow users to post content without having the site review and take responsibility for every comment and every post. The people proposing it haven’t considered how damaging that would be for the ability of individuals to share ideas and their content. When every site with “an algorithm” is liable for content posted, nobody is going to allow you to post something. It’s back to only reading content produced and curated by companies for us. Total own-goal for the individual internet user.
- buellerbueller 6mo ago
  >It’s an obvious backdoor play to make sites go away. Oh no.
- andrewjf 6mo ago
  I agree with what OOP said. But it’s not my intent to “shut sites down.” I have this view to try to increase diversity of media consumption and break people out of echo chambers. If your business model is so shit you have to exploit weaknesses in human brains to keep people viewing ads and can’t adapt, then that’s your problem. If you have an algorithm whose sole purpose is to “engagement” with your own platform (by intentionally and purposely pushing clickbait, ragebait, and media that keeps reinforcing your clicks) you should no longer get section 230 protections - you are no longer a neutral party. These algorithms exist to create echo chambers and keep you clicking so you can consume more ads. I would love to hear other ways of solving the problems of social media.
  - Aurornis 6mo ago
    > I have this view to try to increase diversity of media consumption and break people out of echo chambers. Making sites liable for all user-posted content would do the reverse of this. Every platform that lets people submit content would have to stop doing that, because it’s an impossible liability to manage. You’d have to host your own site. You wouldn’t be able to share anything about it on a social media site because its user-generated content. No visitors unless you advertise it through paid contracts with companies that can review it and decide to accept the liability.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

tencentshill 6mo ago

The algorithm is not personalized. It's the same for every user. No issue there.

tolerance 6mo ago
But still an algorithm. The difference is that we (at least some of us) place a greater trust in the integrity behind how information surfaces on HN. I think that some parts of it are open source, and the moderators are transparent enough about what isn't public + there is a mix of folk knowledge that explains how HN works under the hood. Depersonalized algorithms or recommender systems aren't inherently better than personalized ones. HN is an exceptional example of the former but I think at scale people would come up with a different crop of complaints for them.
- tencentshill 6mo ago
  Yes it's still an algorithm. Cable TV programming is another example. Everyone sees the same content. The ads are changed at the local broadcaster level but are not tailored to the individual, and are not harmful in the ways the EU is regulating. If anything, everyone watching the same thing is good for social cohesion. Everyone discusses the latest TV episode the next day at the office.
  - tolerance 6mo ago
    Right. Withholding the fact that cable television doesn't appear to be the typical distribution method anymore, how do broadcasters select/schedule their programming?
    - fc417fc802 6mo ago
      What's your point? It seems like you're pedantically focusing on a single word without regard for the actual meaning of the broader statement. No one is proposing to regulate things done in the traditional manner of cable tv, nor other uniform and impartial approaches.

xigoi 6mo ago

> Under your definition, Hacker News goes away, too. It doesn’t have to go away, just switch to chronological sorting.

Analemma_ 6mo ago
Have you ever browsed by New and seen the firehose of shit which doesn’t make it to the front page? HN sorted by new is effectively useless and you might as well shut the site down at that point. “Chronological only” might work for something like Twitter where you’re choosing to follow specific individuals to see their posts, it can’t work for curation sites like HN/Reddit.
- xigoi 6mo ago
  That could be solved by allowing users to filter by score or number of comments.
  - throwaway902984 6mo ago
    Which would lead to everyone having their own personalized front page? Not controlled by dang so much but still.
    - xigoi 6mo ago
      Not being controlled by the website owner is the point.
      - throwaway902984 6mo ago
        Yeah for sure, I see what you were saying. Changing that part might not achieve the desired effect though is what I was saying. Context dependent on the site here of course, but in a general sense I could see meta et al. being nonplussed by this to a significant extent.
  - nemothekid 6mo ago

alkonaut 6mo ago

> Hacker News is a site that presents data by algorithm Does it though? I mean by "algorithm" in this context we mean "personalized algorithm meant to maximize engagement and retention". Not e.g. "sort by upvotes and decay by time" or even "filter content based on coarse user location". Does HN show me a different front page than everyone else based on which articles I have read or upvoted? That would make me feel worse about the site because I don't want a personalized HN feed I want to read what everyone else is reading (which is incidentally why I refuse to give up linear TV).

Aurornis 6mo ago
> Does it though? I mean by "algorithm" in this context we mean "personalized algorithm meant to maximize engagement and retention". I addressed that in the second half of my comment already. But yes, HN qualifies as a site that displays by algorithm. If you mean personalized recommendation algorithm then it’s important to call that out. The last thing we want is regulation so broad that it catches every site that ranks things.
- alkonaut 6mo ago
  No one _ever_ even considers "algorithms" in the CS sense here (such as "sorting"), and even bringing that notion up would be deliberately dumbing down the discussion (yet it keeps happening in this thread over-and-over-again because people are for some reason very "well ackshually sorting is an algorithm"). "Algorithm" in this context is very clear what it is. It is not what the word means in Computer Science or in general. Just from the context and without any clarification needed "algorithms" in social media means "addictive personalized feeds".
  - ryandrake 6mo ago
    I think we need a different word, so that Computer Science grads stop getting wrapped around this axle. We're obviously not talking about Quicksort when we're talking about social media algorithms and other recommendation/discovery algorithms. Heck if I know what that word would be.

dangus 6mo ago

The difference is you can’t prove that hacker news has a bunch of psychologists on staff who are dreaming up ways to make the website addictive. If you take TikTok to court and go through discovery you’re going to find internal communications of people talking about ways to get people to stay on the app longer, ways to make the content more addictive, ways to maximize ad reach, etc. Hacker news just tossed a simple upvote downvote system and called it a day. Plus it has no endless scroll, no graphics at all, limits your comment frequency, has no push notifications, etc.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

kjkjadksj 6mo ago

Hacker news front page would go away but not new or any top ranking. It would be nice to have a hn without the second chance queue imo.

cameldrv 6mo ago

It would be a lot better if the user just had more control over the recommendation algorithm, either to replace it with an alternative or tune it. For example, I never want to watch YouTube shorts. Every time I see them, I click "show less often" since it is the only way I can express this preference, and still YouTube shows me them. Obviously YouTube knows that even among people who do this, they still get good engagement out of YouTube shorts, so they keep showing them, but these users have explicitly asked YouTube to not show them. It would be like a recovering alcoholic whose landlord comes by every week and leaves free samples of booze, because they get paid by the booze company, even though the alcoholic has asked them to stop.

SideburnsOfDoom 6mo ago

When we talk about "The Algorithm" in terms of social media, the term has just about taken on a meaning opposite to the original one. My coder's view of the simplest possible algorithm: "People that I follow, their posts, ordered by most recent first." it's transparent, easy to understand, consistent, and a few lines of code. Big Social media's "The Algorithm" : a complex, utterly opaque, personally targeted, frequently shifting internal set of rules that they manipulate to maximise engagement and revenue, while hiding this from the users whole attention is being monetised, designed according to business priorities. Clearly, if you use the second kind of Algorithm then you are no longer an impartial common carrier.